New Q6600 machine

[srtdodge05]

I just built a new Intel machine around a Q6600.

Intel Q6600 Quad Core 2.4ghz
Giga-byte GA-P35-DS3R
A-Data DDR2 PC2-6400 800mhz
Tuniq Tower 120
Seagate 320gb 16MB cache 7200rpm sata2
Dual dvd burners
7950GT OC video card
Audigy 2 Value
Antec 900 case
Enermax 550 Watt power supply

Currently im running at 3ghz with 1.325V in the bios. With coretemp max temp is 70c, idle temp is around 44c. Temps remind me of the old prescott days. I can do 3.2ghz but i need 1.4 and temps go up. I tried to remount my heatsink and fan along with as5 but my temps never changed.

Q6600 @ 3.0ghz 1.325C
DDR2-6400 @ 1040mhz @2.0V

I have the fan on my Tuniq Tower 120 set to 1500rpm and when i set it to 2200rpm my temps never change either. Fan is blowing air out to the rear fan sucking the air out. Isnt much space between the fan and the heatsink wonder if that is a problem.

[Peepaw]

I think your temps could be a bit better. Are you sure you got a good mount with the heatsink?:-/

[srtdodge05]

Its screwed down all the way down. Doesnt really matter what my fan speed is set to on my cpu temps seem to stay them same. Only other thing it could be is i have the heatsing facing the wrong way. :-/

[Peepaw]

I should pay more attention. I just noticed that it's a quad.
I still think it's a bit on the warm side, but I'm not sure what's too hot for a quad.
How about the thermal grease? To much, to little?

[srtdodge05]

Heres how i have it.

[srtdodge05]

I should pay more attention. I just noticed that it's a quad.
I still think it's a bit on the warm side, but I'm not sure what's too hot for a quad.
How about the thermal grease? To much, to little?

I played around with it and i have it on pretty good. I put a like down the middle and put my heatsink on and moved it around.

[srtdodge05]

Hmmm i think i do have it on wrong heres a picture of it in a review from anandtech.

http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2906&p=3

[hUMANbEATbOX]

:confused:

looks the same to me.

you should try remounting. it isn't so much that you have it on wrong, its just that perhaps the TIM isn't making as good of a contact as it could be.

[srtdodge05]

I just took it off again and out it back on and still the same temps. My cpu is undervolted by alittle and i temps are high.

[MadMan007]

I picked up this tip mounting my TT120 - do NOT screw it down all the way. You want to leave some give in the springs to make the surface mating even, turning the screws as tight as possible can make the mounting uneven. The springs are designed to apply the apprpriate pressure themselves.

[srtdodge05]

do you have yours installed the same way i have mine?

[MadMan007]

Umm yea I had it that way I guess. Fan blowing out the back...just lick your finger and put it in front and in back of the heatsink to check airflow direction. You DO have a quad though, it's going to be hot. 3-3.2GHz is about what you can expect for a quad on air I believe.

[srtdodge05]

I just lapped my cpu and heatsink and my temps on core 1 and 2 dropped 2c and core 0 and 3 dropped 1c.

68c
63c
63c
68c

[Brolloks]

Looks like you need to go watercooling IMO...

[GTengineer]

The Quads have a slightly higher thermal specification that the duals. Those temps are not too bad for a QUAD core as long as you are not running 24-7. What surprises me is that lapping didn't help out much. Lapping my old Zalman 9500 decreased temps by around 8-10C

[srtdodge05]

When i lowered the Vcore down to around 1.275 the temps mite drop 1-2c. I think this chip just likes to run hot. Like i said running my fan 2200rpm vs 1400rpm doesnt make a difference either.

[orion456]

You didn't say what your ambient temperature is, that makes a big difference to load temps. You have a 25% overclock on a 105 watt chip, so that's over 130 watts. Have you ever held your hand on a 100 watt light bulb? It's burning hot in a moment. If your room temp is 25c, then 44/70c is normal for an OCed Q6600. If you want to go higher you really need water cooling or some good ear plugs.

Voltage drops usually go as the square of the difference so that's about a 5c drop going from 1.325v to 1.275v, of course it assumes the same room temperature and that varies quite a bit so its hard to make comparisons from one day to the next.

Add a fresh air duct directly to the heat sink fan and try to duct the exhaust externally. Both will drop your temps a good 5-10c. That little exhust fan you have looks too small to handle such a big heat sink and you should probably remove the fan grill behind it, that alone will provide a significant boost to air flow.

The gigabyte north bridge is always super hot, you should add a small fan to that as well.

[graysky]

BINGO... orion hit the nail on the head: what is your room temp? If you haven't seen this already, have a look at this (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=515315) thread wherein the crippling effect of room temp has been documented. In addition to the ambient temp, the ability of your case to disipate the heat your TT is dumping into it can become the limiting factor in cooling. When you said that 1500 RPM on your fan gave the same temps as 2400 RPM, that's a red flag to me that this is likely your problem.

EDIT: I just saw you have a 900 case which as I recall is all fans... are they pushing or pulling? Might wanna consider having more output fans than intake fans particularly the ones near the TT.

Related questions: So you lapped both the CPU and HS... good for you. Got any pics? Are you sure the IHS on the Q6600 is totally flat (i.e. did you take enough material off)?

I saw a much larger decrease in temps when I lapped mine (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=515311).

Another point for you to consider is just how much vcore affects temps. Some chips will do higher o/c values on lower vcore. Mine for example runs perfectly stable @ 9x333 w/ a vcore of 1.2625V in the BIOS (1.232 V under load). I have read about other people claiming they could do it and higher FSB values @ lower vcore settings.

Another question: Did that 1.350V vcore you're using come from you minimizing the vcore via a stress test (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=515513) (I'm assuming it did)?

Here is an analysis of two difference vcore settings and the temps they produce on a Q6600 @ 9x266=2.4 GHz as well as @ 9x333=3.0 GHz. The two voltages I used were 1.112 V and 1.232 V (both of these are the load voltage, the actual BIOS settings were 1.1375V and 1.2625V respectively). 2x orthos ran for 30 minutes and the temperatures were averaged over the last 10 minutes of those runs (well after they stabilized). Room temps was 75-76 °F. Notice that the difference in voltage is ONLY 0.120 V or 120 mV, but this seemingly small difference brought the load temps up by an average of 6-7 °C per core!

Run1 (9x266 @ 1.112 V), Average temps (°C): 51,52,50,50
Run2 (9x266 @ 1.232 V), Average temps (°C): 57,58,57,57
Differences (°C): +6, +6, +7, +7

Now if I add a faster FSB, they increased further:

Run3 (9x333 @ 1.232 V), Average temps (°C): 61,61,60,60
Differences from lowest voltage (°C): +10, +9, +10, +10
Differences from same voltage (°C): +4, +3, +3, +3

[srtdodge05]

My room temp is around 80 degress or so its hot. I set the fsb to 333 and start the vcore at 1.25v and i finaly got it stable at 1.3v. The stock vcore on my chip is 1.325v. I have 2 fans in the front blowing air in and a fan on the back and top blowing air out. The northbidge on my board stays very cool i left my finger on it for over a minute and it didnt get hot.

[srtdodge05]

Heres a picture.

[Denbob99]

You see those darker bits round the edge? They mean its still not flat, also use a finder grit sandpaper, those scratches look pretty deep to me

[srtdodge05]

The max paper i can find is 600 grid. When i event over the chip with a razor blade it looked good to me.

[MadMan007]

You can get higher from an auto parts store rather than hardware stores.

[graysky]

You see those darker bits round the edge? They mean its still not flat, also use a finder grit sandpaper, those scratches look pretty deep to me

He may have a point about the darker areas around the edges; I would recommend that you keep going until you can't see those. Here's mine before it was finished. You can still see a small amount of nickel around the edge, but those higher areas as well:

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/1806/lap2rx6.jpg

After I kept going it looked like this, note you can slightly see the areas around the edges, but I'm not concerned enough to pull it out again and keep going. I think this was just before I got rid of those fine scratches, but you get the idea around the edges:

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/8756/untitled1np0.jpg

So... you're @ 1.3000V in the BIOS now? Is that minimized or did you just lower it and try it? If not, be sure you minimize it according to that minimizing thread I posted earlier.

For reference, my system's load temps @ 1.2625V (load induced by x264.exe) are averaged: 62, 62, 58, 59 when room temp is about 77 °F. I never ran it hotter.

[srtdodge05]

I just re-lapper my cpu and it dropped 2c on 2 cores and 1c on the other new. I think thats the best ill get. Right now im room temp is alittle cooler then last night and my max cpu temp is 63c.

[noxqzs]

SRTdodge,

go to AutoZone, or PepBoys, pretty much any car parts store, and you can get sand paper for paint in 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 grit.

[graysky]

I just re-lapper my cpu and it dropped 2c on 2 cores and 1c on the other new. I think thats the best ill get. Right now im room temp is alittle cooler then last night and my max cpu temp is 63c.

Sounds good dude... more or less in line w/ my system's load temps if you wanna use that as a reference point.

[srtdodge05]

My chip wont run any lower then 1.3v in the bios @333fsb. When i re-lapped my chip theres just a little dark area in the corners but not as bad as before. Right now im running around 63-65c before i was around 69-72c.

[graysky]

Yeah, like I said before, @ that voltage, those are probably as good as you'll get. 65 °C is pretty darn good for an air cooled 12.0 GHz machine when you stop and thing about it...

[srtdodge05]

True and a lot of programs and that wont even support quadcore so it souldnt run that hot.